HIT!

On my way home tonight I got in an accident.

Well, it might be more appropriate to say that an accident got me.

OR, it might be more accurate to say that a college student ran a red light and smacked the front drivers side of my car with the back passenger side of his car.

yeah, that one is the best (and worst).

Don't worry, I appear to be as healthy and crazy a I always was ... but poor Sigmund the Sonata has seen better days. He is currently at the body shop associated with a local Hyundai dealer and I am waiting until tomorrow to hear from my insurance company and to contact theirs.

Fun stuff. And by "fun stuff", I mean Crappy Mc'Crappy (Koozism alert)

The longer you wait

The more you need to post, and the more you have to post, but the less you want to sit down and post. :-/ ;-)

Here is a long needed update going back to the beginning of October:

Josh's Wedding

From josh-wedding

Since most everyone who reads this was there, I will leave out the details and mainly say that Em and I both had a blast. Its always great seeing the old gang together and we will definitely need to find an excuse to do it again real soon. The wedding and reception were great (gotta appreciate all of the hard work Josh and Amanda did). Both Em and I were honored to be in the wedding and be able to celebrate with you guys. You guys are going to do well for eachother.

Regarding the decorating of Josh's car. I think, overall, it went over very well. However, it was over-engineered and under-delivered. I blame myself. Despite our best laid plans (much of which can be found here, and in numerous emails) as well as a random Yahoo Answers post by yours truly ... it didn't quite live up to what I had in my head. Still, as Josh agreed, we get points for using helium (thanks Kevin) and for being different than years past.

From josh-wedding

Oh and thanks to Kevin and Sarah for having us over to their new house and Chaz for driving us around.







Em's Cousin's Wedding

From stl

From stl

This wedding, while not nearly as fun for me, was a good time and by FAR the most over-the-top wedding I have ever been to. Being a family afair rather than a college roomate's lends itself a different dynamic, but they made up for it by far in extravagance.

The wedding took place at the St. Louis Cathedral Bascillica, the largest church in town which is insanely gorgeous. To go along with the beautifully huge church, the wedding party was equally huge and the music was excelent (violinist from the STL Symphony, pro singers, organ, harp).

From stl

The reception that followed that evening was at the StarLight room at the Chase Park Plaza overlooking downtown STL and Forest park. Cocktails and hore-devers were servered prior out on the balcony including a featured drink of the night (mojito) and monogramed napkins. Dinner was high-end (although I actually think I liked Josh's better food wise), great cake, some interesting toasts and a great live band (2 main singers, backup, real DJ, 1/2 guitarists and a drummer). All in all it was pretty crazy and a good time.








Apple Butter

Last weekend we made Apple Butter in our backyard as part of a continuing tradition in Em's family. You can read more about it and see pictures at my food blog.

From stl

From AppleButter2008

Semi-related ... Em and I went to Eckerts the other weekend to pick fresh apples (Fuji) and got ourselves two nice pumpkins from the field.

Jolie

From stl

Jolie is doing well. She was "sick" for a week or two in there but is fine once again. Since we had gotten her, she had developed a bad tendency to pull on our walks (still doing 3-ish miles a day) which we weren't helping. In an attempt to reduce this we considered buying a stronger "harness" collar for her so that she wouldn't hurt herself but on the great advice of one of her friends, didn't. She said that a harness would just allow her to pull harder without knowing it and suggested we get the Gentle Leader instead. Basically its a type of collar that fits a different way, moving the point of attachement to the front under the nose. This means that when she goes too far forward, her head is pulled around. While its not perfect it has made a HUGE difference and I would recommend one to everyone who is having a similar problem.

Attic Insulation

Our house inspector warned us that the insulation in our attic was a little light and that we might want to add some before winter. So, once the cold started to kick in I finally got around to calling a contractor Em's aunt recommended to get an estimate. After taking a look around he said that while he would love the work, that the cost of blowing in another 6" of insulation wouldn't be worth the amount of time it would take to recoup the costs. He said we were indeed a little low but that it would take 7-10 years to recoup the costs. So, we will wait it out and see if the heating is bad or not and then decide ... either way I really appreciated his honesty.

FYI ... his estimates (which I didn't compare to anyone else) were roughly $1k to blow 6" of cellulose covering an 1200 square foot attice given that we have joists 16" off center and a very low roof line (hard to move around in). Rough estimates done by myself at lowes suggested materials by themselves would cost $400 (30+ bags and free blower rental), plus I would need to borrow a ladder and get safety equipment ... AND there would be no telling if I could have blown it in consistently or how long it would have taken me.

Work

Work has been interesting. I finished my brief stint on a large government enterprise architecture project and have moved back to working on a .Net web application with one of my friends.

Last week we had a production push to move ~3 months of work to the live site which resulted in a very long night. We were set to start at 10:30 pm but didn't until closer to 11:30 b/c the other guy's car was over heating on the way downtown. The actual push took a couple hours b/c of a couple stupid issues that were eventually resolved and then the same coworker had car trouble leaving (borrowed car with what turned out to be a bad battery). Nothing to get upshook about, but it resulted in me not getting home until around 2:30. On a bright note, Jolie sounds like one huge pissed off dog at 2am when you wake her up by coming in the front door. Good Dog!

On an interesting and very cool note ... there is a good chance I will be traveling a good amount for work in the next few months. Our company is going to be starting a new phase of a project with a large health care company in California doing Agile mentoring and coaching. Myself and one other guy are the leading candidates for the last spot on the team. It would be 2 weeks a month ~35 minutes outside San Fransico for 6 months (through the begining of the summer). I would be coaching one or more teams, working with their PMs and Scrum Masters to support their agile adoption, provide guidance, help to identify problem areas and work with their developers to do better agile and solid OO work on a dialy basis without feeling the need to have numerous meetings for every little task.

To be honest, I am a fair bit anxious about the idea of being put into such a "coaching" role and of the large amounts of travel .. but I am lucky enough to have a wife who is nothing but supportive and am super excited about the opportunity.

To go along with my normal work, I also gave a Lunch-n-Learn talk a while back on a Ruby GUI tookit called Shoes and have posted a few articles on my tech blog about the LnL, some misc scripts that helped me at work, user acceptance testing with Selenium, and a new side project of mine (List-It).

Thats all for now....

Fantasy Sports

I enjoy sports and I enjoy statistics about sports but I have never really gotten into Fantasy Sports. The idea always appealed to me but I guess I always felt like I didn't know enough about enough of the players and games to make good choices.

My only attempt until recently was back in college when some friends from high school got me into a free NFL fantasy league. After trying my best during the automated draft and the first couple weeks I lost interest/forgot/was busy and didn't update my team or even really look at it again until the playoffs at which time I was very surprised I had somehow beaten a couple of people despite my RB being hurt after the first game and still starting on my team ;-) :-/

Work sponsors paid leagues for MLB and NFL but I didn't participate this year ... however I am trying out my hand at two simplified version.

A coworker writes for Fungoes.net, the local SABR chapter blog, and put together a playoff fantasy league where each person picked players at each position before the playoffs started and will ride them to the end of the World Series at which time whoever's players have the largest combined Runs Created stats wins. Through the first round your's truly is in last place! :-D (Crunchers) Hopefully I will do better in the LCS.

See my post on my other blog for baseball statistic fun related to the playoffs.

Another guy at work started a simple NFL contest where everyone picks a team each week. If they win, you move on and can't pick that team again. If they lose, your out. Last week all but one of the survivors were elimenated so they started up again this week fresh. With the help of the tons of stats that OddsShark has online I picked Tampa over Seattle. Wish me luck :-)

Roller-coaster

Its been a roller coaster couple weeks.

Two weeks ago Em's grandfather passed away. It has been a hard time since then but luckily Em's family was able to all be together and through telling some crazy stories and finding tons of old photos were able to celebrate Peter's life instead of just mourning his death.

............

On some more cheerful notes, Em and I were able to spend a lot of time with her family and ate WAY too much food (if you order food for 50, only 30 end up being there, and the food could have fed 70, you have leftovers).

While Em's brother was in town he was the straw that broke the camel carrying the big screen TV's back ... meaning I finally broke down and got a really nice TV to go with our nice furniture downstairs. Circuit City had a great deal on a 46" Toshiba which when added to their 3-years free financing offer meant I almost had to buy :-). So far I love it and just need to figure out which HD service I am going to get now.

This past week I started work on a new project at Asychrony. We are working on designing and developing a large government organization's "to-be" Enterprise Architecture. I will admit its not work I ever thought I would be doing and I was a fair bit apprehensive at first since its no coding but the project has grown on me a bit. Its an amazing amount of work that our company is doing and will be changing a lot of things. Since me and another guy will only be helping out for about 4 weeks, we have been tasked with designing the metrics with which the next phase of work will evaluated. Not the normal stuff I do day to day and not something I want to make a career of but an interesting month of work.

Yesterday Em and I went out to the St. Louis Art Fair with some friends and had a good time taking in the art work and food from all around St. Louis and the country. Some of the artwork was downright amazing (and equally priced) and others made scratch my head. Unfortunately we didn't pick up anything but I did get re-inspired to do more photography ... if only I could find the time.

Tonight we ate well again. Yesterday we took Em's parents and grandma out to the newest Whole Foods Market and picked up a few things for tonight's dinner. You can read the details of the $31/lb cheese and Dill Marinated Lamb Shish-Kabobs over at my other blog.

Things have been pretty normal otherwise. Jolie is doing well although she is developing a cute/annoying habit of moving random peices of our clothing around the house when we are gone all day. Most of the time its just a sock one of us left out and she carried over to where she was. However, the other day it was a sandle and then a pair of shorts. None are chewed or torn, just moved. Also, and I will admit this is completely my fault, she is getting a little to comfortable on the couch with us. Yes, I am a big softy and let her up on the couch with me which she completely enjoyed. :-)

Lots of stuff

Em has been bugging me for a week or so now to post ..... ;-)

Since the last post we have been keeping busy.

On the bad side, several members of both of our families have had medical issues in the past few weeks. As it stands right now everyone is ok or doing better which is a good thing.

Even Jolie wasn't able to get past the last few weeks without seeing a doctor ....she has had three seperate "minor/treatable" issues since we got her. First was an ear infection (lab + shar pei ears = problem area). Next was a cut on her lip where she bit herself chasing a squirel. Finally, she is currently having some gland issues which we are treating. :-(

As far as the good stuff ....

Em started up at work again and has had some good, unussual and terrible parents to deal with. I have been plugging away at work also; this is the last week of our current project so we are trying to clean up all of the loose ends. In a call this past week with our client, we were informed that a new listing had gone up on their site that we had to check out. This place is CRAZY. If it weren't for the fact that its listed at 5.5 million, I would so think about buying it just to check it out. Who needs drugs if you live in a place like this?

A week or so ago I had to call Charter (or cable company) up to dispute some charges on our bill and while I was on the phone I mentioned a very random ad I saw on the TV a few days prior saying that if new or current customers called up they could get HBO+Cinemax / Showtime + XXX / some other premium channel free until the end of hte year. Well, it worked and now we have HBO and Cinemax free until next August (the ad said until Jan, but the women told me 12 months, so I didn't complain). I would never pay extra for the channels, but for free they are great!

A while back Em finally found Mariokart at a Target while she was picking up some other stuff so she bought it for me. I will post/send my friend code out if anyone who reads this still plays. Its a pretty cool game and I am enjoying working my way through all of the levels. Toad for the win!

Last week was Em's and my 3 year aniversary. Wow, I still can't believe its been that long already. To celebrate we went out to a nice dinner at the Top of the Riverfront. Its a local restaurant downtown at the very top of the Millenium hotel. The main feature is that the restaurant is circular and the whole thing rotates slowly so you get some amazing views. The views were great and the food was good. Plus, they were having a special that week with 24 other restaurants downtown where you could get a 3 course meal at any of them for $25. :-)

Finally, my father in law pointed me to a piece of legislation I had missed in the last few months. It seems that will one of the economic/housing bills passed this year to attempt to shore up the economy, was a provision for a federal "tax-credit" for first time home buyers who purchase their first home between April of this year and sometime in the spring/summer of next year. I still haven't fully researched it, but from what I have read, it isn't so much a tax-credit as an interest free tax-loan. Basically if you purchased your home this year you can get up to 10% of your home's purchase price up to $7500 as a tax credit on your '08 taxes (below the line, meaning straight savings). The catch is that you have to pay this money back. Thats right, no free ride here. Basically, a year after you get the credit you start paying it back in the form of $500 extra on your taxes each year for the next 15 years. If you sell your house before hand, you pay all of it back that year out of your procedes. If you die, its forgiven. So, basically its an interest free loan with really slow pay-back terms. Will this help the economy? I don't know. Will I gladly accept the money and use it to either A) make the final push past 20% on the house so that I don't pay PMI any more or B) buy a TV and laptop. I haven't decided but either way it should be good. :-)

Great baseball seats

Last night Em and I took in the Cards game with some of the best seats I have ever had for a professional sports match. A relative of Em's owns his own small company and occasionally gets box seats for people at work and clients. Somehow, I never got the exact story, he won through a raffle luxury box seats for last nights game on short notice and invited Em and I along with a couple other family members and coworkers to the game.

Despite them losing in extra-innings and us leaving just before the end b/c Jolie was home alone and we wanted to let her out .... they were great seats.

Private box behind home plate, air conditioned with a small bar (stocked fridge of beer, some liqueur, soda, etc), private bathroom, couches, flat panel TV, hot dog/chicken/snack/nacho buffet, dessert cart including 10+ types of cakes and pie, plus two rows of cushioned outdoor seats w/ another tv outside and tables. Not too shabby. :-)

** Jolie is doing well. No problems to report, just a happy dog that is loving chasing the squirrels around the yard and who somehow (according to Em) managed to launch herself up onto the retaining wall which is about 2.5 times her height cleanly. :-)

Removed pests, painted room, and A DOG!

First the "less" exciting stuff ....

This past week Em took it upon herself to paint our office "Harvest Gold" and it looks great. The racing flags (it was a nursery before) and offwhite color just weren't doing it for us. Now the place looks great in a golden color that complements the furniture and looks very nice (great job babe).

original paint job


primed


new color making the windows and the molding stand out

Two great finds while getting supplies were the roller that had an extend-able handle that was only 1 dollar more than the one that didn't and the paint tray with the teflon coating ($1-$2 more) was great b/c there was no cleanup. Just let it dry until the next day and peal the paint right off in one big chunk.

Yesterday, with Em doing most of the work, we managed to remove all of the poison ivy we could find in our back yard. After wo days of spraying it with Roundup Heavy Brush Remover, I soaked down the area heavily to loosen the soil and then Em, fully clothed despite the heat and wearing double layers of gloves pulled it up along with the other ivy we don't like and cleaned the place up. So far no itching and now we can more easily manage the problem if it comes back (anything coming over the fence gets sprayed).

.....

Now for the big news ... we got a DOG! :-) Her name is Jolie (her original name, think Angelina) and she is an almost 3 year-old fawn shar-pei and labrador mix. Em had seen her online and this morning we went to the MO Humane Society and picked her up. She has a great temperment (hasn't barked, niped or groweled yet) and while the other dogs were bouncing all around she was fairly calm and is affectionate to anyone who is willing to pet her. I have been trying to do all of the tips that I have read online and seen on The Dog Wisperer and things are going well. She is still getting adjusted to the house but no problems yet. Only semi-problem so far is that she isn't seeming too hungry, but that will change in time.

The previous owners had adopted her but didn't have any time to spend with her. On their form they put that she wasn't totally house trained b/c she had a few accidents ... but it also said that she was in a crate for most of most days .. :-(. The guy who was taking care of her at the shelter said that she was his favorite and had never had an accident. [crossing our fingers]

I will post more pics when I get some better ones but these will have to do for now. :-)

Good Party and thinking about a dog

The party was a success with 35+ family and friends stopping by and enjoying a burger/hotdog and a drink while getting to see the new house. More people than we expected were able to make it and we appreciated everyone stopping by. It was a nice time being able to throw a party like that in our own home with a good amount of space. When it wasn't raining we even got in a few games of cornhole in the backyard.

Sometime between now and next weekend Em and I may be getting a dog. We have pretty much decided that we want to get one now and just need to do a few things and find one. We will probably be getting one from the Missouri Humane Society since they have a ton right now. We are planning on getting a "smaller" medium sized dog that ideally would have hair on the shorter side ... but we might just end up getting whatever wags its tail at us first :-) Em found these two great looking dogs on their website (Sadie and Chance). :-D

Oh, and I found this link today ... chess and boxing? I was picturing something closer to "wizard chess" but with real people but this seems just as strange.

Checking in, happy belated 4th!

Not too much is going on.

Big party this weekend at our house (anyone who reads this and wants to come is invited). Should be a nice time with friends and family and food. BYOB but we will have some, plus hot dogs, burgers, snacks, soda, cornhole, music, etc

Brined and stuff pork chops tonight .... mmm mmm good.

Been doing a lot of yard work this past week(end). Weed-B-Gone works wonders but the bottle you need to be careful with the bottle with the hose attachment. There isn't a good way to tell how much your applying or how fast you should be working across the lawn. FYI if you put ~50% more than what is suggested on your lawn ... the tips of your grass will turn yellow too. But damned if it doesn't kill the weeds.

We had a tree service come today (actually they came out of the blue today, we had asked them to come out but they couldn't tell us when they would be available). They too two limbs off the tree closer to the house. The tree has some other problems which are stressing it out, but at least this way it will be a little more symmetrical and less prone to fall on the house ... and fill the gutters with leaves..

Em and I went to see WALL-E this past weekend and it was pretty great. Not quite as good as Finding Nemo or The Incredibles but a very good movie none the less (highly recommend). The plot is a bit more "kid-ish" but there are plenty of more adult jokes that the kids miss and plenty of just plain good fun. Oh, and Disney is evidently coming out with some HORRIBLE looking movie about chihauhuas in Hollywood. I will NEVER get that 2 minutes back.

Other than that, just work and softball. This week I am working on an internal Rails project and spent several hours this weekend getting some stuff setup on my home machine to try and learn about it before this week ... well the setup took longer than expected but I learned a ton. Hopefully I will post about it soon.

Em and I joined the local municipal recreation/fitness/aquatic center. Its actually a very nice facility and very cheap compared to other gym memberships. Em got the fitness + pool b/c she will use it and I just got the fitness center and will pay the local resident rate when I go with her. I don't like sitting out like she does, but the aquatic center has a full lap pool, water slide, kids area and lazy river. I do the lazy river.

On the topic of working out I am once again trying to get back(for the first time) into the swing of things. To that end I am trying out several online tools to track your workouts, progress, etc. I am hoping to post a review shortly after I have tried them out for a couple of sessions.

That is all.

Bye Bye Money, moving, and a new-new mower

Its been a busy few days with the new house. We closed last Thursday and have spent good parts of each day over at the house cleaning/fixing/gardening/packing/unpacking/etc. Em has been a huge help in moving tons of the smaller stuff over there the past few days and will be there most of the week as delivery people start bringing stuff.

Empty dining room from the living room and kitchen minus fridge


Living room facing backyard and backyard from kitchen


Our out front living room windows

Some of the highlights of the last few days and of the next few are below:

• We are hoping to have almost all of our smaller items (things that will fit in a car) moved before this weekend.
• We bought our washer and dryer last week from Lowes. We decided on the pair we really liked despite the fact that the dryer was too big for the doorway. Saturday Em's dad and I knocked out one side of the frame to make room. Easier than expected.
• We bought a refrigerator from a local retailer also last week. We were on the fence between and expensive one and a more expensive one (we got it for a good deal under list price luckily) ... and decided to go all the way b/c it something that should last 10+ years and while the amount more wasn't nothing, given the nicer features it was worth it.
  
• Note: when purchasing ANY appliances or things that are bigger than you can carry in your arms ... verify that it will fit where you want it before you buy ... and verify that it will fit through every room/door way between your front porch and where you want it before you buy (we realized that our fridge will only fit INTO the kitchen without the doors, which they said wouldn't be a problem for the delivery people) .... also, if your spending 1k+ at a store, you should be able to get free delivery if you push them for it.
• We bought our furniture last week too (yeah, it was a helluva week for the our wallets). We got a really nice looking bedroom set and couch+love seat from Ashley furniture. They had the living room stuff in stock, but had to order the bedroom set so we won't get either for ~3 weeks. We wanted it earlier, but were willing to wait.
• We are contemplating re-sealing our hardwood since right now is the best time we will ever have to do it before we move everything in and eventually get a dog ... still not decided though.
• Its still amazing how much stuff you have and even more amazing that it could all fit into a rental truck (or our new living room) if so motivated.
  
• I rented a truck this past week for Sunday from BudgetTruck.com. While I was checking out I noticed their promo code box and figured I would try for one last time one of the random web catalogs for those kinds of things. Well, for the first time I found one that worked and RetailMeNot.com came through with a 20% discount!
  
• Its also amazing how big a house feels without anything in it and how much you need to buy to feel like its full
• We dropped a few bills at Home Depot this weekend getting stuff for the yard/outside/house. Some of the highlights were caulk which Em used in the bath to seal a tile, an electric trimmer, hoses, rakes, hardware, a couple tools, and a mower.
• Em has spent a good deal of time cleaning up the landscaping and has made some excellent progress.
  
• The mower. Initially I was contemplating a cordless electric mower and joking that it would be funny to try a manual push mower .... I ended up purchasing a self-propelled gas mower. :-) I went this route b/c there was a deal at Home Depot for a really nice one which should serve me well for many years and with the hill in our front I didn't want to push a heavier (b/c of the batteries) electric mower up it ..... but wait theres more.
• The mower is a Toro with a Briggs and Straton engine. Setup consisted of unfolding the handle, clicking it into place, adding the included oil, and filling the gas tank. Simple. The thing started on the first pull and ran really smooth .... HOWEVER the handle bar that initiates the self propelled feature was installed wrong and I can't get it to go. I can push it ... but I didn't pay the amount I did to have to push anything. So I call around: Toro customer service says to bring it into a service center to be fixed under warranty. Home depot says to bring it back to get a new mower (I opted for this). Today I convince my father in law to bring his van by, we load it up and take it to the store (not far), bring it in and the guy at the return desk says this:
  
  "Sure we can exchange that .... oh, does it have gas in it?"
  To which I say, "Yes, of course, I just filled it up".
  "Oh, well I can't take it back if it has gas in it. You have to take it somewhere else and drain it or run it dry before you can return it"
  
  A bit or arguing, talking to a manager, and watching the father in law make a guy look stupid later ... I had to go buy another gas can and go in the parking lot to drain the mower. Its not like a gas can costs a lot .. but when you buy something that expensive and heavy/awkward and it turns out to have a manufacturing defect ... the last thing you want to be told is that you have to drop another $4 just to return the damn thing. 10 minutes later I had a new mower.
  
  First let me say that while I understand the policy (fire hazard), it still doesn't make it right from a customer's perspective. What is the first thing you do with a mower ... fill it up! I understand you don't want to be responsible for random customer's gas coming into your store ... but you sell gasoline engines for pete sake ... have some policy and/or procedure in place beyond "we can't do it, take it somewhere and bring it back empty".
  
  That being said ... despite my frustration I ended up a fair bit ahead. Before we left to drain the mower Em's dad said in no nice terms that the manager should go get us a new mower while we did it so that we could leave as soon as we were done. When we got back a new mower was on a cart waiting for us .... and it was the next model higher than the one I had purchased. I noticed right away b/c they have big numbers on them so that you can find them on the floor away from the display models ... but figured either A) the manager had done it on purpose to compensate us for the hassle or B) I wanted it for compensation for my hassle and the guy had grabed the wrong one. I decided to not say anything figuring that the guy ringing up the return would probably catch it and have to get another one or that I would find out he meant to do it. Well there was no mention of why I was getting a #12 and not a #11 but I kept my mouth shut and now am the proud owner of a 6.75 HP mower (instead of 6.5) with self pacing features (you gently push the mower forward and the handle adjusts the speed automatically so that it matches your speed without you doing any work ... instead of a manual lever) and it has an automatic primer instead of a manual one. So all in all I am happy, questing my morals, but happy :-) original .... new hotness
  

Thats about it. Friday I have all day meetings at work at Windows On Washington (the other portion of the same place that we had our wedding reception) and then on Saturday we have our company picnic. Sunday is the big move with the rented truck and should be our first night in our new home! :-D

I thought I had lots that I wanted/needed/should do before. Well, my new To Do list puts the old one to shame.

Closed : Home Owners

Yep ... its official. Em and I are the proud owners of a mortgage! Err... I mean a new house!

We met up for our closing this morning (I took the day off) and after signing and initially what seemed like a mountain of paperwork (more like ~40 pages) we were officially the owners of a mortgage (we also had to run to our bank and get a cashiers check for by far the largest amount I have ever paid and turn that over too).

A few hours of waiting and buying house supplies the sellers had closed and we officially had our house. :-)

The previous owners were great, they were gone well before we got there, had mowed the lawn since the walkthrough, left the window treatments that we liked along with a few small pieces of furniture and a bottle of champagne on ice :-) We spent the rest of the day/evening making plans, doing some minor cleaning, and showing the house to Em's sister and my parents. We capped the evening off by ordering pizza to be delivered to our new house.

Tomorrow, Em is going to spend a good chunk of the day cleaning (everything was in good shape but its the only shot we will have to really clean it before things are moved in) and doing some arranging. This weekend we have a BBQ and a family picnic along with Father's Day festivities. Also, sometime between now and next Wednesday I need to figure out how to take apart a doorframe in our basement so that the washer/dryer set we bought yesterday (yep, we started saying goodbye to our money yesterday) will fit. We ended up only finding one set that would fit throught he doorway and decided we would rather have the hassle of taking it apart and putting it back and have the ones we wanted .... than have ones we didn't like.

Next up is a huge list of cleaning/fixing/setting up/etc things around the house, packing and moving smaller things and gennerally getting things set up. Also we will probably be buying our fridge tomorrow (if we can decide between the expensive one we like and the more expensive one we love) and a bedroom set and living room set soon.

Hurray for debt! Its the American way, right?

Parks, Hidden Parks, and more

As always, its been a busy few days

This past weekend Em and I took in the few hours of nice weather and went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens (where they had the orchid show a few months ago). Along with all of the really cool plants and gardens that they always have they also are featuring artwork for the Niki collection. The huge and ornate sculptures were pretty amazing.

Em's favorite Niki sculpture


The ever-hungry koi and irises


Another Niki sculpture and some cool glass floating things

Later that night, Em and I went to Bailey Chocolate bar to formally and finally fully celebrate her getting her new job. The place had a great atmosphere and the food/drinks were really good. Em had a couple mojito sorbet martinis to drink while I had a very crisp New Belgium Sunshine Wheat and a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (very intense and filling, but good). To munch on we had a sampling of cheeses (a camembert, a drunken goat cheese and one other) that came with assorted nuts, fruit and breads. For desert we had a delicious banana split that had Baileys ice cream and more chocolate.

Today Em and I both gave blood at our church after work and then, after dinner, we walked over to a local park. We had heard that there was a little park tucked away behind another church within walking distance but hadn't ever seen it or knew exactly how to get to it. Well, tonight we found it and were quite surprised. It was much larger than we anticipted, very close to our apartment, and featured among other things: tennis courts, basketball courts, a large pond with fountain and a bridge, two gazebos, well kept up gardening and a large playground. Not bad for being within a mile of our place. Too bad we just found. To go along with the other things, we also saw a ton of wildlife including a duck with ducklings, tons of large tad poles, tons of small fish, bunnies, and a large deer with one antler.

Twin Oaks Presbyterian through the trees

In house news .... there really isn't much news. We have our final walkthrough a week from today and in 10 days we close! Finally. Tonight I did clear up one thing related to taxes and insurance. Evidently I was actually thinking about it correctly, but thought I wasn't. With our lender, we pay slightly ahead on our taxes each month which are collected into an escrow account until November when they are paid. Rinse and repeat. Insurance is slightly different, however. At closing we will be paying for a whole year of insurance (through summer of '09) and each month we will be paying for the same month 1 year in the future. This is so that the lender makes sure that their collateral is properly insured. It stinks b/c its your money sitting in their account but once you get to 20% equity .... you can stop .... and if if you sell the house or pay it off .... you get your money back.

Not much else to blog about (not that most of this is very interesting to begin with). We did get a letter today saying we would be getting our economic stimulus check by the 6/7th of June .... why they didn't just send the check I will never know ... but at least it should be here soon. Also, since Em doesn't work during the summer she was given the option to get her final two months of pay up front, so this past pay day was a nice one :). Its a shame most of whats in our checking account at the moment will be leaving in 10 days .... but at least we finally get to start moving in :-)

An Inch Too Far

What am I talking about? Dryers.
And actually, they are about 2 inches too big.

Em had the thought a couple weeks ago about whether or not the washers and dryers we were looking at would fit through the doorway into the laundry room in the new house .... and if the curren't owner's appliances would be able to fit when the wanted to remove them (we think they finished the basement after they had them down there).

Through our realtors we found out that the doorway is 27 inches and they made no comments about realizing they couldn't get theirs out and would we like to buy them (darn!).

Well thats just dandy, but the two pairs we were trying to decide between both have dryers that are just a little bit bigger than that. The washers would just fit (~ 26.5") but the dryers have part of the drum sticking out behind.

So, we aren't exactly sure what we are going to do about it. We will probably look around a bit more and see if we can find a pair that will fit, but the most likely solution will be trying to remove the door frame while we move stuff in, and not break it too much.

Its a bummer (we had found some great deals this past weekend). But at least we know it in advance.

....

This past weekend was a ton of family stuff (celebrated Em's parent's anniversary by coordinating a surprise dinner at the same place we had our rehearsal dinner), barbeque's, and a trip to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery to see my grandpa's grave and pay respect to the veterans buried there (the boy scouts put flags on every grave each year which is nice).

Tuesday our softball game was rained out for the 3rd time. So far in 7 weeks of play we are 1-1-2-3 (wins/losses/by-weeks/rain-outs).

Grab Bag and Insurance

Lots of little things have been going on lately

• I won my companies Cardinals tickets again (almost missed out b/c I thought they were for the following week) and went with Em and my parents. It was good time even if they lost.
• Our car is back to normal (and has been since the repairs). No lasting ill effects I am happy to report
• Work has been all over the place: hard at work developing one week, a week of documentation and writing installers for our code, and this week has been waiting on the client and helping out another group while we wait.
• I have been able to muster a small amount of time for some personal tech projects lately (some notes about them and work on my tech blog here)
• Last weekend Em, myself and several members of Em's family partisipated in charity walk at a local park for brain cancer research (a relative of Em's died from it) which was a good time and a great cause.
• I got 3 or 4 recruiters messaging me on LinkedIn in the past two weeks including one from someone who works for LinkedIn about a new team they are starting. Its always good to know you could get a new job if you needed to (and its even better to know you love your current one :-) )
  

I am sure there are other things I am forgetting.

Other than that the only big thing to report is that I have been looking into homeowner's insurance which I will probably be deciding upon tomorrow. Luckily it looks like the company we have our auto insurance through has some decent deals so that will work out well. Its amazing how complex the stuff is, how many options you have, and how its just one more thing to pay for when getting a house :-p

Once I decide I will post some details of what we got, or at least why I got/didn't get things.

Fun stuff!

Emily got the job!

Yesterday Em was told she got the job!



** She has been working in a 1 year position to fill in for a woman who was on maternity leave. When the woman put in her resignation, the position opened up "for real" and Em applied just like any other candidate. She was unlike other candidates in that she was already working in the position and everyone loves her. Oh, and she rocks. So after going through the whole applying/waiting/interviewing/waiting process, she finally got her job and can now enjoy the relaxation that comes with not having to look for another job. **

I am so proud of her

All over the place

I am tired!

Partially b/c while my generic Zertec has been working well, its not fool proof.
Partially b/c its been a busy couple weeks.

Up until today it was all good stuff.

A couple weekends ago we went to Louisville for Nate's wedding. Its always great seeing the gang and hanging out, plus weddings are tons of fun (especially when your not worrying about anything). Surprisingly, I didn't take too many photos (I haven't been taking many lately anywhere) but here are a few of my favorites:

Captions and a few more pics after the jump...

Last Saturday Em had a very busy day involving detention (administering, not sentenced), going out with some of her Truman friends to Bailey's Chocolate Bar (she said it was amazing) and found time in between to play beautifully at church.

Well, church is an understatement. My aunt is a nun and a member of the School Sister's of Notre Dame. This past weekend was a large mass and celebration of their 175th year of existence as an order, and their 150th year in the St. Louis area. 150 years ago a small group came from Germany and started teaching in downtown St. Louis at the then St. John's church. Today, the Shrine of St. Joseph is a huge and remarkably restored church. Last weekend several members of the family and I took in mass with a whole gaggle (I am not sure what the term for a group of nuns is ;-) ) of nuns at St. Josephs where Emily played with the orchestra and decently sized choir and heard mass from Arch Bishop Raymond Burke. It was very interesting and inspiring sitting through mass with that many people who all REALLY believe and love their calling.

To round out the good stuff, Em finally had her official interview for the counseling position she is currently working in (she filled in for a woman on maternity leave this year) and from all accounts it went very well. I am confident and she is nervous. I bet I win out ;-)

Oh and we won our softball game!

Now for the bad ......

It took me 4 hours to get to work this morning b/c of car trouble. Actually, it wasn't really car trouble so much as it acted a little funny as I was leaving for work and the check engine light came on. I took it to Auto Zone but they couldn't read the diagnostic code so I drove out to the nearest dealership and waited 2 hours (1 before they could see it, 1 to diagnose) to ultimately find out that my fuel pump had a bad seal and that they would be ordering me a new one an fixing under warranty (thank God). So then after waiting for Enterprise to pick me up (yay free rental), waiting for my car and then driving clear across town to get to work, I finally got there 4 hours later. So for the time being I have a Mazda 6 and need to call in the morning to find out when my Sonata will be fixed (first problem of any kind).

Also today we got a letter stating that the funds from a check we deposited in JANUARY has in a round-about way, been un-deposited b/c of a banking error. From the little we could gather its b/c of a probably typo either when the check was issued or when it was processed but in either case we are left with a annoying mess to straighten out without anyone easily to blame, 4 months of interest in limbo and an account missing a decent chunk of $$$ that was there yesterday .... and through no fault of our own. Good thing is is that it won't effect us in any immediate financial way (it came out of our emergency fund) and won't effect the house buying, but its still a huge hassle.

Oh and it has rained a ton the last two days and I have tons of work to do. Interesting and fun work, but still work. Bring on the weekend!

What are YOU doing with your stimulus check?

I still haven't decided. And since I haven't gotten mine yet, I am not committing the money to anything until its been cashed. But its still a good question. What are you going to do with a free $600 - $1200+ check?

From what I have read, the checks are not to be taxed income and will not effect next year's tax returns (if anyone can cite something that says otherwise, please let me know). That being said, assuming the money is free as in beer and freedom ... then I still don't know what I am going to do with it. From what I understand Em and I will be getting $1200 (married filing jointly) but we shall see.

My initial thought was to use it to buy some of the stuff we were going to buy anyway for the house ... but in the end that just means I stuck it into our saving account which doesn't seem very fun ;-)

Today when I had a few free minutes I came up with the following list, aprox. in increasing order of "fun" (which happens to be the inverse of the "responsible" things to do):

• Add to emergency fund
  
• Mortgage - hurray for saving interest and money for whenever we sell the house
• Em's last school loan
• Car loan - thats 4 months of of payments!
• Retirement - I took a small hit switching companies before all my money was vested, the new pay was worth it but most of that is going toward house improvements at the moment
• Upgrading some of the purchases we are going to make for the house irregardless (e.g. buying really nice washer/dryer or refrigerator instead of just nice)
• Extra misc house stuff we would like but aren't planning on buying
• Vacation fund - Em and I want to go on a big trip next year .... maybe
• LCD TV for downstairs (e.g. something like THIS)
  

Yep, the TV is sounding nice.

However, after making that list, I turned the piece of paper over and wrote down everything we want/need to buy in the next couple months related to moving into the house. Some of that list included.

• Bedroom furniture
• Living room furniture
• Yard stuff (rakes, shovels, mower, hoses, trimmer, patio furniture, etc)
• New exterior door
• Mattress, linens and towels for guest bedroom
• kitchen island thingy
• bookshelves for the office
• refrigerator
  
• washer/dryer
• window treatments
• paint
• cleaning supplies
• Ethernet cable and wall adapters (I want to run it throughout the house)

So, since that list is bigger and much more immediate I think we are just going to sock it away to use on some of those thing and the tons more that come with home ownership, moving and suddenly living in a space 3x bigger than you were a week ago.

So ... what are YOU doing with your rebate?

Apraisal, long week, sore arm

We got news today that our house was appraised for 5% more than what we paid which is very nice because A) it means we didn't pay too much for it, B) instant "return" on investment :-p, and C) thats 5% less we have to go toward 20%. :-)

I forgot to mention in my last post that I ended up deciding to go with the "normal" PMI route after all. After a ton of excel-spread-sheet-ing and going back and forth I decided that given the fact that we intend to pay a bit extra each month, it was more likely we would live in our house longer than the break-even points (I did the math was 10%/12.5%/15% and extra month payments ranging from $0 to $300). Now with the added "free" equity we get on the house with the numbers went even lower so I am guess-timating that the break-even point is around 4.6 years which should be much less than our stay in the home.

This week is shaping up to be a long but interesting one. This weekend Em and I are traveling to Louisville for a college roomate's wedding (90% of my 15 readers will be there) which should be a great time. In order to take off Friday and not have to use vacation hours (I don't have that many saved up since I started the new job) I am working extra each day this week. The good thing is that the work is really interesting right now and we are making some real progress on our current project.

Also, tomorrow night we have our first softball game of the season. It is going to be interesting to see how the league and the team plays (slightly different rules than what we had in Cinci) and I have heard we finished aprox. second last year which is promising. A few guys and I went out at lunch and threw a couple balls around for 30 minutes and many my arm is tired already. At least I know I haven't lost everything since the last time I played.

Speaking of games with balls and bats .... last week I was the winner of the company's Cards tickets so Em and I went with my cousin and his wife (we had a blast). The seats were real nice and we saw a great game which is always the most important part.

Oh, and today I finally broke down and wore shorts to work. ;-) I know, poor me. Its funny how you get used to wearing "real" clothes to work and how it still makes me feel weird going to work in shorts, tennis shoes and a polo. Nice, but weird.

The Earth Done Quaketh, and stuff

-- thank you Lewis Black

Yep, the other morning (as anyone who has seen/heard the knews in the past 3 days should know) there was an earthquake centered in south eastern Illinoise. While not real close to us in STL, any amount of close when talking about the earth moving violently up and down, is too close. The shaking didn't last long, but did last long enough to wake Em and I from our sleep. I only woke up enough to convince myself that whatever was making the noise wasn't my concern and to tell Em that "no, its not an earthquake, its probably just a train, go back to bed" .... evidently my brain functions when half asleep, just in the completely wrong way.

Other than being the first earthquake I have actually felt ... it wasn't a big deal. Many people I talked to sleep through it. This included my grandma who slept through it but thought she was going crazy when she found her china cabinet and grandfather clock doors open the next morning. She didn't immediately believe a friend she talked to on the phone, but while she was talking we got the first aftershock which quickly opened up her china cabinet doors again ... mystery solved.

The only thing new on the house front to report is that the sellers sent back our inspection report with what they were agreeing to have fixed. They agreed to everything except two things: 1) the plumber they talked to said that the downstairs bath was properly vented to code and would give us a signed letter stating it (fine by me), and 2) they aren't going to pay to have a new circuit run into the garage for the garage door opener (I wish they would, but not a big deal). Since they agreed to have everything else fixed, we went ahead and agreed and sent everything back. Oh, also we locked in our interest rate and got our final "correct" good faith estimate which was less than what we were expecting (yay) but a slight increase on the rate (changes every day, we ended up with 5 and 7/8%). Nothing to do now but secure home owner's insurance (or a letter stating that we CAN be insured), look at more appliances and furniture and start planning the move.

Work has been busy as ever. We finally got a signed SOW for our work with the National Sex Offender Registry so we have started on that (should be aprox a 6 week effort for two of us concluding with installation of web services at two states (TBD) and possibly presenting at a national conference in Baltimore). Its getting exciting, if not scary. I had to remember everything I knew about Java web services and learn a whole bunch of new stuff in a single day.

Also, we had our work's quarterly meeting on Friday (nice lunch and presentation) this past week. It was really nice. They discussed the financials (we are doing well and given the economy, very well over the past 2 years), recently awarded contracts, work in the pipeline, upcoming events, etc. Its amazing how much more ownership and connection you feel in a smaller company and how much you realize your actions actually effect the bottom line when compared to working as a contractor to a large international company. Plus its crazy and cool to find out that of the ~100 employees, we have 5 or 6 PHDs, a MD, the ex-CTO of NASA, and a 3-star General all working for us in various ways.

Last night Em took me out for a early birthday dinner to a Japanese/Asian Fusion restaurant we had never been to before and we had a great dinner (ordered way too much food, but thats an ok problem to have) and tonight she baked me a wonderful pineapple-upside-down cake and had our parents over for gifts (I got a new iPod-FM transmitter, a book on herb gardens, some clothes, and a large enamel-coated cast iron stock pot. ;-) )

Oh, and I went and hit some golf balls today for the first time in a few years. Happily I wasn't as bad as I thought I would be. Sadly, I was still very bad.

Repair Requests and Frost

Firstly, we sent our repair requests to the sellers yesterday requesting that the following be fixed:

• kitchen and lower bathroom outlets have properly grounded GFI switches installed
• new dedicated circuit run to garage door opener
• two upstairs drains refitted to iron drain stack (new fittings)
• downstairs bathroom drain properly vented

** all of the requests were also followed by "by a licensed electrician/plumber".

Hopefully they will agree to make the changes (none are major and could be easily/quickly done if they have someone come out) or if they don't have the time, to give us the money to do it ourselves. We have 10 days starting yesterday to come to an agreement with the sellers on these issues (per our contract), however, I am not sure what exactly we can do if they were to say no, other than walk away (which we don't want to do). I am primarily concerned with the electrical work b/c water damage is bad, electrocution or fire is worse.

The only other news on the housing front is that we briefly went around to a couple furniture stores and a Lowes to look at living room furniture, bedroom sets, washer/dryers, and refrigerators. I had an idea of how much each of these things costs since we went looking a couple months ago, but its still amazing. I understand "you get what you pay for" and that there are real differences from a "cheap" appliance or furniture and "nice" ones .... but come on. I can't figure out the different between a 1k or a 2k fridge that would justify the cost. Really I don't understand why a 1k fridge costs as much as it does .... but if you want a decent side-by-side your in that ballpark. Anyway, it looks like its a good thing we got the house for a good price ... its gonna cost us more than a few $$$ to deck it out :-p

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The only other thing going on is the crazy weather. Frost on my car!? In mid April!? Did Mother Nature go on an early vacation?